


my legs are steady now

by soft_rains



Series: you can go your own way [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-05-01 00:28:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5185298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soft_rains/pseuds/soft_rains
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(the angels warned me never to fall down)</p>
            </blockquote>





	my legs are steady now

**Author's Note:**

> a sort of prompt fill that veered way off because i can't make these true love floofballs angst for the life of me: 'pls give me “we’re exes who ended on kind of shitty terms but are trying to ‘stay friends’ anyway, and we occasionally sabotage each other’s dates, get drunk and fuck, scream and fight until four in the morning and still refuse to acknowledge maybe we’re not quite as over each other as we like to think we are.”'

The break up is a monster in disguise; a brutal, ugly thing in a mask that says _it was mutual_ and _it’s better this way_. She tries not to think about the fact that it might just be her whispering these things into the void. The truth is, she turned away first; the truth is that she doesn’t know what his face said in her wake. She hadn’t wanted to, she still doesn’t.

 

But, the unfortunate causation of falling in love with her good friend is that the majority of their friend groups overlap. There are only so many events they can both skip before their friends intervene. It’s a tense affair, the first time Mary Margaret and David manage to trick them both into brunch with the larger part of their friend groups. But she gets through it. Without throwing her drink at him. Or vaulting across the table to kiss him senseless.

 

She’s pretty proud of herself for that.

 

Every consecutive meeting thereafter gets a little easier. Her heart still feels like someone tied cinderblocks to it and tossed it into the Charles every time she sees him, but it gets easier to wear the mask. The one that says she’s moving on. The one that says she’s okay with the fact that he actually is moving on. But the day she gets a friendly phone call from Ruby, who not-so-casually mentions that Killian asked her for restaurant recommendations, well.

 

They’ve only been broken up for two months. After nearly four years of dating.

 

She can hardly be blamed for indulging a little in the crazy ex-girlfriend stereotype.

 

\---

 

The rapid banging on her front door starts at exactly 8:03 pm. Given that he’d had a reservation for seven, across town, she’s pretty proud of herself. That doesn’t mean she’s gonna take credit for it, though. She doesn’t care that he went on a date, she doesn’t care that they’ve been broken up exactly sixty-three days, she doesn’t care that someday they will have been separated longer than they were ever together. She’s suddenly decided, while sitting on her couch in candy cane pajamas, eating triple chocolate ice cream for dinner, that she is better off on her own. Or it’s not that she’s just decided this, but that she’s resolved herself to remembering how she lived before him, when alone was the default and everything else was a lie.

 

It's a good way to live, she tells herself, but the mask cracks and splinters with every harsh pound of his fist against the door. Finally, if for no other reason than to keep the neighbors from filing a noise complaint, she opens the door.

 

“I know it was you, Swan!” he spits, barging through her door and spinning furiously on his heel to address her.

 

“I have no clue what you’re talking about, Killian,” she protests, putting on the most innocent face she has.

 

She even bats her eyelashes, like that will change the fact that Killian’s date was probably arrested only a few minutes after she sat down. Like Emma isn’t the only person he knows with connections in Boston PD. Like she’s not the only person who cares enough about his heart to do a thorough background check of the person he would consider giving it to.

 

It’s not her fault he has a terrible radar for terrible people. It’s his fault for picking up a woman with outstanding warrants. It’s his fault for knowing that _she_ was a mess of jagged glass, knowing her damaged heart and deciding to love it regardless. It’s his fault that she believed, for just a time, that she could be healed. It’s his fault for the pain they are both in now.

 

Once a thief, always a thief; he should have known better than to open his chest cavity to her sticky fingers.

He should have known she wouldn’t be satisfied until she ruined them both.

 

But he didn’t. And now here they are; his chest heaving with anger, his eyes calling her out on what a complete liar she is. He opens his mouth and she assumes his lips will start speaking for his eyes, but they don’t.

 

Instead, they crush themselves to hers with the kind of force that levels buildings.

 

She thinks about pushing him off her, thinks about the days, weeks, now months, she’s spent convincing herself that their breakup was for the best. But her resolve wavers; she’s already destroyed them both, what can giving into the aftermath hurt now?

 

So instead of doing what’s best for both of them, she tears his (obscenely) well-fitting jacket to the floor and promptly jumps up to wrap her legs around his waist. Of course, the fucker doesn’t miss a beat. This would all be so much easier if they didn’t fit together so well in bed. But every time, even after two months apart, they are perfectly in sync, two halves of a whole. She can’t stand it, every hot press of his mouth to the skin of her neck feels like someone pushing down on the mishmash of bruises her heart has collected over the years.

 

It hurts, it hurts, but it hurts _so_ _good_.

 

They are naked and rolling around in each other and her bed before she fully lets go of how ugly a battlefield tomorrow morning is going to be. The raw push and pull of desire between them hasn’t diminished, not even a little, and she’s so _fucked_ , but she needs him, right-

 

“ _There_ , there, yes, please, _please_ , _oh_ -.”

 

Why she can’t shut her goddamn mouth is beyond her, and she hates his smug fucking grin, grinding his hips sinfully into hers, hitting just right, making her blood boil so hot she thinks she’ll explode if he doesn’t go faster and he knows it, god damn it, he _knows_ what slow and purposeful does to her and it’s not _fair_. She closes her eyes, needing to push the tears down; she can’t give him that satisfaction, not after the weakness she’s already showed by letting him back between her thighs. But of course, _of course_ , he knows, and his movements become all the more tender as he brushes a few strands of hair behind her ear and implores in a soft caress of breath against it to _please, love, open your eyes._

 

But she can’t, they can’t, this was a horrible decision, why does no one ever take the self destruct button away from her, how could she be so stupid as to let his warmth back into her life, she’s going to _shatter_ -

 

And she does. The soft rolls of his hips into hers, the gentle way he grips her jaw in his hands to press a kiss that’s nothing but pure love against her forehead, everything that he is, wants to be for her, in this moment and always, it all conspires to push her over the edge of ecstasy so gently she doesn’t even realize she’s falling until she’s taking him with her and they’re so wrapped up in each other that nothing matters but this this _this_.

 

\---

 

Of course, after their chests have stopped heaving hard enough for words to be impossible, he blames it on her: “Why can’t you look as hideous and unattractive in holiday pajamas as the rest of us?”

 

She thinks about smothering him with a pillow, but she decides that it can wait for tomorrow. After they’ve gotten all the hurt and blame and heartbreak out of the way, after he gives her another mind-blowing orgasm or two, then she’ll smother him. Maybe not with a pillow, though. It would be a shame to put such a talented mouth to waste. She doesn’t think about it too hard, instead let’s sleep drag her down slow, enjoying the feeling of falling into slumber with him like she hasn’t in months.

 

The morning isn’t going to be pretty, but the unhindered affection with which he kisses her right shoulder before he pulls the covers around them and snuggles her tighter into his hold makes her think that the morning after the next one might be.

  
Because as sleep steals her away, she is already starting to re-evaluate her conviction that being alone is better.


End file.
